Learners' attitudes to standard vs non-standard South African English accents of their teachers

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Learners' attitudes to standard vs non-standard South African English accents of their teachers

Galanakis, Linda

2010-03

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study is interested in the relationship between accent and hearers’ perception of the speaker. It
investigates the kinds of stereotypes related to phonological features of the speaker’s language.
Specifically this thesis focused on the perceptions that high school girls have of their Mathematics
teachers who speak English with a non-standard accent. The general aims of the study were to
establish whether high school girls perceived non-standard English speaking Mathematics teachers
negatively and, if so, whether this perception changed as the girls mature.
Twenty-seven Grade 8 learners and 14 Grade 12 learners from a private English-medium school in
the Gauteng Province of South Africa participated in this study. The school attracts learners from
the affluent socio-economic group, and the majority of the learners are white (76.8%) and first
language speakers of English (86%). These participants completed questionnaires using the
matched-guise technique (Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner and Fillenbaum 1960) to determine their
perceptions of six accents. Five speakers were recorded reading the same Mathematics lesson in
English. One reader read the same passage twice, using a so-called Standard South African English
accent for one recording and a second language accent of an isiZulu mother tongue speaker for the
second recording.
The results of this investigation indicate that high school girls are inclined to stereotype teachers
according to the teachers’ accents. Some of the characteristics attributed to the non-standard
English speaking teachers were positive, but generally learners held a negative perception of such
teachers. There was very little change in this perception from Grade 8 to Grade 12.
Of particular importance in the National Curriculum Statement for Grades 10 to 12 is that learners
emerge from this phase of their schooling being “sensitive to issues of diversity such as poverty,
inequality, race, gender, language, age, disability and other factors” (www.sabceducation.co.za/).
The school where the research was conducted has addressed diversity in numerous ways in an
attempt to prepare the learners for life in multilingual and multicultural South Africa. That the
Grade 12 learners in this study, whether first language speakers of English or not, still display
accent prejudice suggests that the life skills objectives are not adequately met and that this form of
prejudice needs to be addressed in more creative ways.